The Dealmaster can save you $150 on that Alienware gaming laptop

We've got some high-resolution monitors in the mix, too.

Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson is on vacation this week—as I write this, he's probably cooling his heels in some ritzy hotel room, day-drinking and being wrong about Star Trek. He's left it to me to keep his seat warm and provide you with the customary deals from our partners at LogicBuy. Today they're offering up a nice discount on an Alienware gaming laptop and a backpack to sling it in, as well as a couple of handsome Ultrabooks, a steep discount on a last-generation Intel NUC, some monitors, a few chairs, and more accessories than you can shake a little paper umbrella at.

It's easy to get high framerates when you don't have many pixels to push:

14" WLED HD (1366 x 768) Anti-Glare Display

That's a crap display, Alienware.

I have this Alienware, but I went with the screen upgrade, along with everything else. i7 + 765 + 1080p screen makes for beautiful gameplay. I just got done with Batman Arkham Origins with the graphics maxed out and it was smooth.

It's easy to get high framerates when you don't have many pixels to push:

14" WLED HD (1366 x 768) Anti-Glare Display

That's a crap display, Alienware.

I have this Alienware, but I went with the screen upgrade, along with everything else. i7 + 765 + 1080p screen makes for beautiful gameplay. I just got done with Batman Arkham Origins with the graphics maxed out and it was smooth.

They are nice machines. I ended up opting for a Gigabyte 15.6in with similar specs (wanted something bigger than 14in). Those specs on an 1080 IPS make most things look good.

Apparently these drives are vintage 2007 models. Or it's a cut & paste error from the line above, because seven years seems an awfully long time to keep something like this on the shelf. Anyone other than Texas Instruments would have to liquidate that sooner.

Man, that NUC looks like an impulse buy. I know you have to get some other stuff to make it truly functional but the discount here helps ease those other costs. I really want a tiny PC for playing indie games and emulated retro stuff on my living room TV. Any additional HTPC functionality would just be gravy. I have an Apple TV, which I like, but that's a limited and closed system.

I am a total PC gaming noob, though, and the thought of messing with this thing seems a bit over my head. Then again, I want/need to learn this stuff so I might as well dive in at some point ...

I've priced out what it would take to build a system with that NUC before, and in the end you're at about $280. Have to buy an mSATA drive (about $70), RAM (about $50), network card (about $25), and a power cable (about $5). The power cable is insignificant money, but many people don't realize it doesn't come with one.

The article Ars recently ran on using a NUC for basic gaming or productivity is a good read if you haven't already seen it. Heat *can* be an issue, though with emulated gaming and many indie titles, it probably won't be a problem.

I've priced out what it would take to build a system with that NUC before, and in the end you're at about $280. Have to buy an mSATA drive (about $70), RAM (about $50), network card (about $25), and a power cable (about $5). The power cable is insignificant money, but many people don't realize it doesn't come with one.

The article Ars recently ran on using a NUC for basic gaming or productivity is a good read if you haven't already seen it. Heat *can* be an issue, though with emulated gaming and many indie titles, it probably won't be a problem.

Thanks! Yeah, I read that review and it was a good read, but their gaming test was using AAA games like Bioshock Infinite. I have my consoles for the big-name games. I want the new indies, emulated retro games and the 1990s and early 2000s PC classics I've missed out on these last 20 years. Between owning something like this, all three Playstation devices, an Xbox 360 and (soon) a MacBook Pro, I figure there's not much I could miss out on. (The idea of booting Windows on my MBP is also holding me back from buying a small PC, but I'm just not sure it's ideal.)

EDIT: Upon further review, it appears this NUC is so cheap because it's the next-to-lowest end of the line. It doesn't even have an IGP, which is really a bare minimum requirement, even for basic indie and retro gaming. Looks like the current best models have the HD 4400 IGP and there's one come out in two weeks with the HD 5000. Maybe the 4400 version will drop in price later this year after the new model's been out a while. While $160 is tempting I'm afraid it's just not worth it for what I want to do.

I've priced out what it would take to build a system with that NUC before, and in the end you're at about $280. Have to buy an mSATA drive (about $70), RAM (about $50), network card (about $25), and a power cable (about $5). The power cable is insignificant money, but many people don't realize it doesn't come with one.

The article Ars recently ran on using a NUC for basic gaming or productivity is a good read if you haven't already seen it. Heat *can* be an issue, though with emulated gaming and many indie titles, it probably won't be a problem.

Thanks! Yeah, I read that review and it was a good read, but their gaming test was using AAA games like Bioshock Infinite. I have my consoles for the big-name games. I want the new indies, emulated retro games and the 1990s and early 2000s PC classics I've missed out on these last 20 years. Between owning something like this, all three Playstation devices, an Xbox 360 and (soon) a MacBook Pro, I figure there's not much I could miss out on. (The idea of booting Windows on my MBP is also holding me back from buying a small PC, but I'm just not sure it's ideal.)

EDIT: Upon further review, it appears this NUC is so cheap because it's the next-to-lowest end of the line. It doesn't even have an IGP, which is really a bare minimum requirement, even for basic indie and retro gaming. Looks like the current best models have the HD 4400 IGP and there's one come out in two weeks with the HD 5000. Maybe the 4400 version will drop in price later this year after the new model's been out a while. While $160 is tempting I'm afraid it's just not worth it for what I want to do.

Just to be clear, it's not bottom-of-the-line, but it *is* the last-generation Ivy Bridge version of the NUC (complete with the Ivy Bridge GPU, the HD 4000). It's actually the same model as the Ivy Bridge model I tested in the Haswell NUC review, so you can look there for CPU/3D and power consumption numbers. If you're more worried about old/emulated/indie games than new ones, the HD 4000 is still going to be a pretty good IGP for you. The Ivy Bridge version actually has a Thunderbolt controller too, if you want some high-speed expansion later on. Here's the Intel product page.

Apparently these drives are vintage 2007 models. Or it's a cut & paste error from the line above, because seven years seems an awfully long time to keep something like this on the shelf. Anyone other than Texas Instruments would have to liquidate that sooner.

It's a single width USB3 drive, so it's not a 7 year old relic; although even there IIRC the dual drive raid enclosures more or less peaked at around $500-600.

Apparently these drives are vintage 2007 models. Or it's a cut & paste error from the line above, because seven years seems an awfully long time to keep something like this on the shelf. Anyone other than Texas Instruments would have to liquidate that sooner.

It's a single width USB3 drive, so it's not a 7 year old relic; although even there IIRC the dual drive raid enclosures more or less peaked at around $500-600.

I found a time with the appropriate $/GB for a single drive (not that 3TB drives were commercially available back then) and worked from there. BTW, that abnormal normal price is still in the article.

Any modicum of research would have informed you that Alienware is not a good value, if you look at 'gaming laptops' on newegg you'll find dozens of better options, here are a couple.

Disagree. Read gaming laptop reviews on Anandtech. If your criteria is solely to get the most GPU for your dollar, Alienware is going to fall short of its rivals. However the cheaper competition all fall short on some combination of build quality, screen quality (low contrast TN vs anything else), keyboard quality, touchpad quality, or thermal management. AW's premium comes from and is justifiable in that they get all the parts that aren't buy-the-fastest-mobile-gpu right as well.

Can I get a source for this, because I see the exact opposite in other places of the web, but they're also generally unsourced discussion forum posts like this one. Does anyone even collect these statistics in a manner that can be compared among different brands?

Andrew Cunningham / Andrew has a B.A. in Classics from Kenyon College and has over five years of experience in IT. His work has appeared on Charge Shot!!! and AnandTech, and he records a weekly book podcast called Overdue.